clicker training FLAW.

[cylent]

so i guess we're nearing the end of this thread.

I suppose the best way to do the whole "Clicker = treat" training is to starve the bird first.
Yes, I know I may have hit a nerve there but really if a bird has food in their cage and they are full and dont care to eat ...you get my point.

 

[getwozzy]

Not starve them first, but do it when they're hungry...so before a meal, perhaps....making them more food-motivated.

 

[jakrob4]

All I am asking is this: IF i was a parrot and a giant (being a human) had a hand pointed out or opened to me I'd ignore it.
Whats to make me, (the parrot in this scenario) want to do what the hand points me to do and not just ignore it? dont say the clicker.
i am getting a headache trying to make sense of this.

First of all I have to say the benefit of using a clicker compared to voice commands is the split second timing. Most people don't use a clicker properly when training with it and can confuse the bird even to the point of being detrimental. When using a clicker every click must be timed perfectly and never done at the wrong time for it to be most effective. When training a bird to wave at the beginning for example the click must be done the second that foot lifts off the perch. If done too late it can make the bird think it was getting a click for something else and might not even try lifting its foot for many more tries. When clicker training no click is better than a badly timed one.

For my advanced birds I do all my training sessions slow at the beginning with plenty of praise and lots of treats to ease them into it and by the end of it it is an intense challenge with only seconds between clicks with barely any praise and only a treat every 4 clicks or so.
They fly back and forth between me and a perch with many randomly mixed tricks between. They finish it off quite puffed, exhilarated and wanting more so they look forward to the next training session. I compare it to a workout session, if you go at it slow the whole time without much challenge you never really get your heart racing and it is really quite boring. If you start off slow and then end up really pushing yourself and smashing it out by the end of it you feel amazing (and sore) and have a lot more fun. Obviously you need at least a couple of tricks in the bag before you can start doing this.

A bird that likes it owner loves praise, affection and attention, they will do anything to get it just like a dog does. The only thing they like more than that is food treats. They also have no problems understanding the majority of human language if they have grown up around it and been involved when using it in context.
For example my hahns macaw lands on my shoulder about 8.40pm every single night and says 'I wanna say goodnight'. She asks my lovebird if she wants a scratch before grooming her by saying 'you wanna scratch'. If she is getting attacked by my blue and gold macaw she fights back and says 'no, stop it' repetitively. She says 'goodbye' every time somebody is leaving the house including visitors even if they haven't said the word goodbye but given off body language they were leaving. That is only a few of the things she says in context there is many more. It is very arrogant of you to say that birds will never understand our language, if you don't believe me look up "alex the african grey". Here is a link [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO6XuVlcEO4]Nova Science Now : Irene Pepperberg & Alex - YouTube[/ame] His best skill is between 6:35 and 7:10 on the video.

I would be very amazed if your parrot was still ignoring your hand after you have given it a sunflower seed or nut. The only 2 reasons I can think of why it wouldn't be interested is if you are feeding it excess seed in its food bowl and its not hungry at all or its scared of you.

If you think pointing at something is gonna teach it a trick you are mistaken. Unless you have trained the bird to come to the end of your finger previously, pointing at something would get no reaction from the bird. If you have been feeding the bird with that hand it my look to see if you are holding a treat but that would be about it.

I will give you a breakdown from the beginning to teach a simple flight recall with a clicker that works and maybe you will understand the difference.

1. Click the clicker then give your bird a food treat or something else it enjoys, this could even be a scratch or both.
2. Once the bird is giving a very obvious reaction that it thinks it is getting a treat when it hears the click it is ready for the next step. This could take 20 minutes or 2 days. This is called conditioning.
3. Slowly bring your hand towards the birds chest in the shape of a perch until the bird starts to seem scared or uncomfortable, STOP right there and don't move it any closer, give the bird a treat with your other hand and then remove both hands completely. Keep repeating this until you can get within a few cms of the bird without it being scared at all but do not touch it yet.
4. Now put your hand in front of your bird like a perch then gently say 'Come on *birds name* step up'. Don't touch its chest or be close enough to make it uncomfortable, if you are forcing it to do something you are doing it wrong. If it doesn't step onto your hand on its own use your other free hand to hold a treat just out of its reach so it would have to step onto your perch hand to get the treat. You must also be holding the clicker in one of your hands at the same time (this is a skill in itself haha). The second your birds puts both feet on your hand you must click and say good bird then give it a treat.
5. Keep repeating this until your bird understands it very well and even steps up without a voice command. Don't give it treats every click, mix it up but make sure you say good bird every time because you can use that to let it know it has done what you wanted when you don't have a clicker or when showing friends tricks.
6. Do the same to get it to go on its perch but change the voice command to '*birds name* on your perch'. Make sure you click the second it steps on its perch as well and give it random treats for doing it.
7. Pick a whistle that you can do loudly and easily, this will be your recall whistle. Don't use your fingers in your mouth and remember the one you pick will be used for the rest of its life so pick well. This helps if your bird ever gets outside or if your training it for freeflight. My hahns macaw even uses this whistle to call my lovebird from the other end of the house.
8. Now put your hand in front of your bird like a perch but a hold it a little further away, then say 'Come on *birds name*' and do the recall whistle you picked. So for example my command is 'Come on Abby *phwt phweo*'(The phwt phweo is my recall whistle, it's sort of like a wolf whistle but done faster).
8. Do the same for getting it to go on its perch but don't whistle just use the on your perch command. As you get further away you will find it will be a lot easier to get it to come to you than it is to get it to fly back to its perch. To solve this start only giving treats after it has flown to you and then back to its perch but still click for both.
9. Once your bird is jumping/flying off the perch to get to your hand on command keep moving it further away until you are getting it to fly from the other side of the house or into different rooms. You can nearly turn it into a game of hide and seek using only your whistle as the hint to where you are.
10. Repeat this daily for the rest of its life and in 4 years time you will probably have a bird that you could take outside and it will come to you on command.

Once they are well trained they will do commands for either a voice command or a hand signal.

If you want to teach a bird to turn around use the same method but hold the seed above its head and behind its back so it turns around and then bring it back around to the front so it does a complete spin, the second it finishes the spin click. As it gets better do the same movement but with no treat in your hand, it will think you are holding one anyway. Once it is confident with that start doing the spin with your hand slowly higher and higher above its head until you can do the hand movement from a distance.

To get it to fetch start off by giving it the object you want it to fetch, the second it bites it click.
Slowly start lengthening the time it has to hold the object until you click. Then put the object next to the bird and tell it 'pick up the *objects name*' and it should pick it up on its own, click the second it picks it up.
Start holding your hand under it so when it drops the object it lands in your hand and give the commmand 'give it to me' or 'bring it to me', the second the object touches your hand click. Once it figures out 'bring it to me' means put the object in my hand you can start moving your hand further away or throwing the object further away.

Every trick is taught in baby steps this way, all the clicker does is pinpoints the exact second the bird has done the right thing. I also find the birds are more interested in the training if I'm using the clicker.

Good luck and let me know if there is something you don't understand in my post.

 

[jakrob4]

Use food treats that they only get when they are training. I don't feed my birds seed usually but they get sunflowers seeds during training. If you use nuts make sure you chop them into little pieces first.

 

[Ambermai]

Try this: How to Teach a Parrot to Turn Around | Parrot Training | Howcast

I did exactly this and my bird now spins around on cue (my finger above his head circling and my voice command "turn around")

 

[Birdman666]

so i guess we're nearing the end of this thread.

I suppose the best way to do the whole "clicker = treat" training is to starve the bird first.
Yes, i know i may have hit a nerve there but really if a bird has food in their cage and they are full and dont care to eat ...you get my point.

no! You don't starve them...

But, if they have an absolute favorite treat, you don't give that to them in their bowl, they have to work for it...

 

[Birdman666]

not starve them first, but do it when they're hungry...so before a meal, perhaps....making them more food-motivated.

exactly.

More motivated. Less lethargic.

 

[MonicaMc]

Here's one relatively good video on how to teach 3 simple tricks.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ6FcDYD60w"]How to teach your bird 3 simple tricks - YouTube[/ame]



An article about using food management to train parrots....

Bird Whisperer of Las Vegas: Taming & Training Rescue Birds



Food is the best reward when teaching birds new behaviors. However, as they learn to enjoy training and spending time with you, these rewards can become varied. A reward could be scritches on the head, praise, a favorite toy or maybe even flying to you!


Casey, my first tiel, is highly food motivated. Likewise, she's also very highly motivated by scritches! I taught Casey to fly to my hand or arm for scritches. I taught her to step up using scritches. I could have used food to train her, but I didn't have to because I knew of another reward that she enjoys sometimes just as much if not more than food!

Sprite, my cat, I taught her to come to me whenever I call her or make any kind of noise. She's not very treat or food motivated even though she likes food. What she does enjoy however is physical attention. If she was laying down and ignoring me, I'd get her attention by going over and petting her. Since Sprite enjoys being petted, her attention would then be on me. I could then walk a couple of steps away from her and encourage her to come to me for petting. When she'd oblige, I'd pet her! Then I'd walk away a few steps and repeat. I'd actually go through the entire house that way getting her to follow me, pet her, follow me again, pet, etc. Now I just have to call her or make some noise at her (as long as she knows I'm trying to get her attention) and she'll come right over!

Sprite's brother on the other hand... well, if you tap a can against a hard surface or rustle a plastic bag, 9 times out of 10 he'll be right there! Regardless of what he was previously doing, including sleeping, he'll come running!



Point being, food doesn't have to be used all the time, however it is a bridge to help close the communication gap. No, you don't have to starve a bird to get them to work with you, but they need to be hungry enough to be willing to work for it.


If you ate a *huge* dinner, you might not be interested in dessert afterwards. If you had a normal sized dinner and you weren't completely full afterwards, then you may enjoy having dessert.

With birds, you don't want them stuffed and you don't want them starving. You merely want them to be hungry enough to be willing to "work" for their "dessert" (highly desirable reward).




I actually have a couple of videos showing how simply hand feeding a bird every day can change their behavior. Faye is a rehomed cockatiel of unknown age. She lost her mate in her previous home and has lived at a minimum of 3 homes prior to mine. She wasn't tame or friendly when I got her, but she watched me feeding one of my other tiels by hand so she wanted the same behavior. If you pay attention to the video, you can see there is food right behind her! So it's not like she *has* to eat from my hand, she could have easily chosen not to! But she did. Watching her behavior you can tell how she is so hesitant and unsure about what she's doing, yet she keeps coming back for more.


[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9w9w8nMRmw"]Hesitant Faye - YouTube[/ame]




And like I said, all I did was feed her by hand every morning. Sometimes I'd feed before I would set food out and other times food was already set out but I had some extra in my hands. No other physical interaction with her beyond just feeding her by hand. And so in this next video, you can see how her behavior has changed. She's more confident and less on alert.


[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH9ZWxhCSAE"]Not So Hesitant Faye - YouTube[/ame]




How long did it take to achieve that? Weeks. Not very long at all. Faye actually got to the point that if I didn't feed her by hand in the mornings (even though food was set out!) then she'd follow me around the room "demanding" it until I filled my hand with food and offered it to her! She would then happily fly over and chow down!


I actually had no desire at first to feed my cockatiel flock by hand, but one tiel saw me feeding the budgie flock by hand and well.... monkey see, monkey do! One cockatiel led to two. Two led to three.... Oh heck, I might as well feed them all by hand! (only have one truly tame cockatiel! only one that readily accepts scritches all the time! one that frequently flies to me for attention! The rest were not tame but not afraid to afraid for their life if I got too close!)